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For Jeanne

T. F.

To Molie, the biggest of little readers I know


I. A.

For Sarah, Simon, and Gabriel


S. G.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either
products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

Text copyright © 2014 by Timothée de Fombelle


English translation copyright © 2014, 2018 by Walker Books Ltd.
Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Isabelle Arsenault

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or


stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic,
electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without
prior written permission from the publisher.

First U.S. edition 2019


This story previously appeared, in slightly different form, in The Great War
(Candlewick Press, 2015)

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending

ISBN 978-1-5362-0520-6

19 20 21 22 23 24 APS 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in Humen, Dongguan, China

This book was typeset in New Clarendon.


The illustrations were done in watercolor, pencil, and ink.

Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144

visit us at www.candlewick.com
illustrated by

translated by Sam Gordon


I have a secret.

The others think I’m drawing in my notebook when

I’m sitting on the little bench underneath the coat hooks

at the back of the classroom. They think I’m dreaming

as I wait for evening to fall. And the teacher passes me

by as he gives instruction to the students.

He places his hand on my hair.

But I am a soldier on a mission. I am spying on the

enemy. I am preparing my plan.

I am Captain Rosalie.

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I’m disguised as a little girl, five and a

half years old, with my shoes, my dress,

and my red hair. To go unnoticed, I don’t

wear a helmet or a uniform. I stay there,

silent. A far as the other children are

concerned, I’m the little girl who comes

and sits at the back of the room and

does nothing all day long.

My mother has worked at the factory since the start of

the war, ever since my father went off to fight. Now I’m

too old to go to the nanny’s, so every morning my mother

drops me beneath the sheltered part of the yard at the

school for the older children, before the sun is even up.

The school yard is deserted. I wait all by myself,

eating the bread and butter that my mother has knotted

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into one of my father’s big handkerchiefs. Dogs bark in

the distance, out there by the farms. The dead leaves

whistle their way across the school yard.

The teacher arrives at seven o’clock in the morning. Since

coming back from the war, he has only one arm. But he

smiles as though having just the one is quite something.

That and being here in the silence of the school.

“Still at your post, young lady?”

He should be calling me “Captain” and saluting, but I

keep quiet. Secret mission. I can’t give anything away.

The teacher said to my mother at the start of the

year that he would look after me, that he would let me

sit at the back of the older children’s classroom and do

my drawing, that he would give me a notebook and

some pencils.

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My mother shook his hand for a very long time to show

her thanks.

I hold his large bag in my lap while he opens up the

school. His belongings carry the aromas of woodsmoke

and coffee. This must be what it smells like in his

brightly lit house just behind the school.

One of the older children, Edgar, arrives before the

others, because he’s always in trouble and has to

light the stove in the classroom as punishment. I like

Edgar a lot. I can see that he doesn’t listen to a thing,

that he simply won’t learn how to count or read, but

one day I will make him a lieutenant. Edgar lets me

strike the match before throwing it into the stove.

The fire, when it gets going, is the same color as my

hair, like a little brother who looks like me.

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When the students arrive, I am already sitting down

at the back of the room in my place against the wall.

They are two or three years older than me. I let myself be

covered by the coats as they hang them above my

head without paying any attention to me. I wait a

bit, and when they are all at their desks, with

their backs to me, I push the coats aside as

if I were bursting from the undergrowth and

ambushing them from behind in a clearing.

Only Edgar notices me, with my

notebook gripped in my hand.


But I’m already listening to the teacher, who is

reading aloud from the first page of the newspaper.

Every morning he gives us news of the war.

“Yesterday, Tuesday, the German troops were crushed

at the Somme. Our men are fighting and reporting

victories.” Then he says, “We must have faith.”

And then some mysterious names: Combles,

Thiepval . . . recaptured villages.

The teacher always gives us good news, never bad.

He leaves the students standing behind their chairs a little

longer, in silence. He tells them that they must think of

our soldiers who are giving up their youth, their lives.

Sometimes, when he speaks like that, I get the feeling

that he is looking at me, and I turn away so as not to

catch his eye. How could he know about my mission?

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When at last the class sits down, I pretend to be

elsewhere, lost in my thoughts, even though I am

concentrating perfectly. I am Captain Rosalie, and I have

infiltrated their squad this fall morning in 1917.

I know what I have to do. One day I’ll be awarded a

medal for this. It’s already gleaming deep within me.

The freckles beneath my eyes, the animals I draw on

the page, the long socks up to my knees . . . all that

is just camouflage. I have heard that soldiers hide with

bracken sewn into their uniforms. My ferns are the scabs

on my knees, the vacant daydreaming, the tunes I hum —

sweet little melodies for a sweet little girl.

The teacher writes symbols on the blackboard, and the

students read them out loud. I watch the boy in the first

row as he stands up and approaches the board.

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